I have a friend who, although
he confessed and has been forgiven for having an affair, can’t seem to forgive
himself. He continues to grieve over the damage and hurt that resulted from adultery.
Some Pharisees and teachers of the law wanted to see a miraculous sign from
Jesus and he answered, “A wicked and adulterous generation asks for a
miraculous sign! But none will be given it except the sign of the prophet Jonah”
(Matt 12:39 NIV). Jesus was speaking of spiritual, rather than physical adultery.
However, it occurs to me that all of us, at one time or another, have been guilty of
spiritual adultery…and yet we fail to confess and ask for forgiveness.
1 comment:
Gail;
-----If we must ask specific forgiveness for each and every specific sin in our lives, then we are all doomed. We all sin in ways we can not even perceive. We all have misperceptions stored in our minds which we quite think are rock solid truths, and we use them in our thinking. We misapply thought and emotion processes. We even emote some proper emotions too strongly, and others too weakly. Are we to think that a sin is not a sin unless it is consciously recognized as a sin? That’s a dangerous perception in light of the fact the Greek connotation of “hamartia” (sin) is simply not hitting the bull’s-eye. Anything that is not completely perfect is sin. Then woe are we if confession must list each and every one. Like forgiveness, confession is first an attitude, a way of relating to a complex system of multiple aspects: a sinner, a victim, an indirectly affected public, The God, and even an entire course of events that would have occurred had we done what was right, and all the people adversely affected because that course of events will not occur. Imagine the butterfly effect of everything being done righteously! We are not only guilty of every misdeed, but also of all that misdeed’s butterfly effects.
-----I have giant thankfulness and praise for God’s grace and mercy given through Christ Jesus. It covers every sin of the entire world except blasphemy of the Holy Spirit. Not even adultery is blasphemy of the Holy Spirit. Blasphemy exists in two broad categories interconnected through the being of the blasphemer: usurpation and judgment. To usurp is to set one’s self up in the place of the Spirit, which is essentially judging the Spirit to be lesser than yourself. To accuse the Spirit of being wrong, that is, to judge the Spirit is to set yourself up higher than the Spirit, which is usurpation. To even imply the Holy Spirit is wrong about something is a judgment passed.
-----Thank God there is some element of deliberation or something of the sorts involved in the unforgivable blasphemy Jesus warned us to not do. I don’t think our brother is deliberately assaulting the Holy Spirit by not forgiving himself. Indeed, adultery is immensely destructive to many victims. But the Lord God is immensely capable of making all things work together for the good of those who love Him, which many of the victims most likely do. God’s purpose in those who do not love Him is even served by the destructiveness of the deed (Prov 16:4.) We must admit we live in a chaotic, turbulent, destructive, uncomfortable world much less than half-attached to God. The adultery this man has done is just another turd in this sewage-lagoon of a world. That is no excuse to do adultery or any other sin. But it is the intellectual reality available for detaching the emotions from the turd so they can be reattached to the Lord full of abundant forgiveness and eternal life. When I mess up big I feel it big for many days. But always in mind are the facts that this world is made of mess, God uses even mess to serve His purposes, and that He forgives me not so much as if I never did it, but as if He will find my mess and the damages it made to be useful in the many other things He must achieve in other people’s hearts and minds through the Holy Spirit.
Love you all,
Steve Corey
Post a Comment